Quest for Closure
by Alexis Rockford
Summary: Rikku makes a trip to the Farplane to visit a fallen friend. Takes place right before FFX-2. One-shot. Aurikku, only not. Just read and find out, k? A fic 4 years in the making due to stupid college!


Quest for Closure

By Alexis Rockford

A lone figure robed in white and clutching a bulky package wrapped in red cloth, marched resolutely up the path from Guadosalam to the Farplane. She held her head high, as though she felt that this short journey would affect the fate of the entire world. In reality, however, this trip was a mere matter of closure for the solitary pilgrim, who was truthfully feeling much agitated underneath her veneer of pomposity.

The few Guado guards who had survived the devastating events of the past weeks numbly fell back to let her pass. They felt no further concern for the daily comings and goings of the people around them. Life was empty and meaningless for them since the loss of Maester Seymour. They now existed passively to such a degree that they reminded the young woman of the zombies that infested the decrepit Zanarkand temple, barely alive and sustaining damage from all attempts to aid their plight.

The moment's encounter with the forlorn sentries had passed uneventfully, allowing the traveller to complete her traversing in peace. She sighed airily and yet with deep emotion as she crossed the ramp and arrived at the domed precipice known as the Farplane. As she set her bundle down, a shimmering curtain of dancing lights flitted carelessly about the small, spindly-legged girl. She walked to the edge and slowly closed her eyes, focusing her thoughts on the one she had come to see. His face flashed before her mind as clearly as when she had viewed him before her: the firmly solid mouth, the dark hair splashed with streams of silver, the penetrating gaze of his one functional eye. And then, before she realized she had opened them, her own eyes beheld a mirage so lifelike she nearly choked with emotion.

"Sir Auron?" she ventured timidly, her large green eyes blinking in awed disbelief.

The image of her mentor and fellow guardian did not move, but she could hear his voice echo in her mind with that familiar exasperated tone. "What is it now?"

At the sound, the odd swirls in her eyes misted over with tears. Sarcastic as ever, but with a hint of concern, the vision of Auron continued, "Rikku, why have you come? Everyone knows you are scared to death of this place." The voice paused for a moment. "Surely you cannot miss me already."

The young Al Bhed girl put her hands on her hips. "Of course I do! It's been nearly two years since Yuna—" She stopped in mid-sentence, unable to bring herself to say the word "sent." Instead, she abruptly changed the subject. "Why else would I be here?"

"Sphere hunting?" Auron suggested bluntly, his brown eye gazing past her into her very thoughts.

Rikku coloured slightly at this, wondering how in Spira he knew about the Tidus sphere she had found and her new job with the Gullwings. "Um, well, I plan to fit that into my schedule, too, but this is way more important." She put her hands behind her back and lowered her head. "Actually, I came because . . . well, I have a score to settle with you, you big meanie!" Her hands returned to her hips, and she gave him a defiant glare.

"What is it now?" mocked the apparition, and she could hear the characteristic tone in his voice, that caustic, devil-may-care attitude that had made him so unapproachable in life.

Rikku's carefully guarded emotions burst out like water from a dam. "You lied—to all of us! You put on this big façade of self-righteousness with all your talk about the dead going where they are supposed to—and all along you were unsent yourself."

"I never lied." Auron's voice was detached and matter-of-fact. "Did you ever ask if I was dead?"

Rikku had been about to slam him, but his words made her stop and think. "Well, no," she replied after a moment's contemplation, "but why _would_ I—or anyone else for that matter?" she finished quickly in order to hide the fact that she had been thinking about him obsessively for the past two years. "We had no reason to suspect—"

"Oh, no?" He interrupted her rant forcefully and yet with a subtle gentleness that left her feeling very confused. "Then Maester Seymour's comments to me in Guadosalam planted no seeds of doubt in your mind. Yuna knew. Even Tidus, as thick as he was, figured it out eventually. Humph. You really _are_ guileless. Or should I say, clueless."

"Maester Seymour? But what has he to do with this?" sputtered Rikku.

Auron seemed to roll his eyes as he said. "Did Kimahri ever send you the artefacts I left you?"

Rikku crimsoned and retrieved her parcel. She lovingly unwound the fabric of her mentor's robe to reveal a large stone jar with the word "NOG" etched in Spiran on it. She took both and returned to the image of Auron. "Yes, and I've brought it, along with your robe. He must hold you in high regard to have kept it all these years. I was rather surprised when he produced them last year, and even more shocked to discover that you had left them to me, whom you didn't even know when you . . ." The word yet refused to come.

Auron ignored her reticence for the present. "Open the jug," he commanded blandly, "and concentrate on that day at Maester Seymour's."

She nodded and sat down with the huge vessel. Carefully, she pulled out the cork and cast her mind back to that day two long years ago. Suddenly, a silvery mist surrounded her and she was transported to Maester Seymour's salon. Yuna and all her guardians, along with Seymour, were in the room, conversing. The tables were laden with food just as she remembered they had been. She could see herself pilfering the snack tables when she had thought no one was looking. Now though, she noticed that the past Auron's eye was following her. She couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw the corner of his mouth twitch into a smile behind his foreboding collar.

Evidently the conversation was over, and Auron began to leave the room. Rikku saw herself hide behind Yuna to avoid his disapproving gaze. Then Seymour turned to Auron. "Why are you still here, sir? I beg your pardon. We Guado are keen to the scent of the Farplane." Rikku's eyes widened in understanding as the memory faded away back into the jar.

"Oh, gee," she began timidly as she re-corked the jug. "I guess I was too busy munching to get what that loser was going on about."

She was about to wrap it back in the robe when Auron said, "I want you to wear it, Rikku. That jar along with my robe should work on your sphere grid. Then you three can transform into a samurai whenever you need to."

Rikku was about to ask how he knew about YRP and the sphere grids, but thought the better of it. Instead, she carefully put her arms through the sleeves of the worn vestment. A strange new warmth pulsed through her body as the heavy garment came to rest on her shoulders. It seemed to give her a new kind of strength. As she reached for her sphere grid, a familiar sword materialized in her other hand. "Your masamune!" she exclaimed with awe. "And it's just my size!"

"Now do you see?" Auron asked patiently. "What I did as an unsent, I never regret. I realized that my own foolish passions had caused my untimely death. That is part of the reason why I seemed so cold when you knew me. I was ashamed of my actions. Attacking Lady Yunalesca like that was suicide, and I knew it. I thought I'd be doing my friends Braska and Jecht a service by offering my life in their honor. Instead, I rendered myself useless to protect their children, as I had promised. Or so I thought. My 'unfinished business' led me to become unsent, which was the only way I could've ever gone to Zanarkand to retrieve Tidus. That took care of my promise to Jecht.

"Yuna was a little more difficult. Eventually, I realized that I would have to reveal myself to her and her guardians by offering my services. I knew there was a risk of someone figuring out I was dead. If this occurred, Yuna might attempt to send me before my task was complete. I couldn't let this happen, not before she defeated Sin. So I distanced myself from all of you and kept silent as much as was possible. I know I must've seemed cruel and insensitive, but it was the only way I could think of to avoid detection."

"I know all that!" choked Rikku as tears streamed down her face. "But why did you go? You had been unsent for so long; couldn't you have stayed a little longer?"

"My task was done, Rikku," he explained calmly. "I had cheated Death for long enough. It was finally time to face my actions. I had already made my choice that day twelve years ago as I struggled to drag myself down Gagazet. I knew then that I was going to die. I could tell from the way Rin treated me at the Inn that night. I realized that I would be forced to break my promises to Braska and Jecht if I didn't become an unsent, so I set my will toward that end. However, even as I did so, I pledged a new oath that I would accept my death as soon as I fulfilled my vows. That's why I waited until after the battle with Yu Yevon before charging Yuna and the rest to take my place as guardians of Spira. I knew my task was done, and yours had begun."

Tears welled up in Rikku's eyes as he finished. "'This is my world now,' huh? Well, what if I don't want it? What if I can't do the things you expect of me?"

"You will be able to do them, as long as you trust yourself and the Fayth. Just because they are no longer among you, doesn't mean they cannot help. And I will aid you the best that I can, should you ever need me."

The image began to fade. Rikku reached out to it desperately, but it only seemed to become more transparent as she did so. "It is time for me to go," he stated calmly as his face shimmered before her. Now the blurriness of his likeness was worsened by her tears. "I can't make you understand what I did. I can only explain my motives, and hope you'll forgive me for anything I may have done to wrong you." Rikku continued to snivel. "Fine, behave like a spoiled child," he admonished, "but it won't change anything. This is the way things have to be whether you like it or not."

Rikku struggled to dam the flow of her tears. She hated to be called a child, but she despised herself worse for deserving the epithet. If she wanted Auron's respect, she would have to earn it. "I guess this is goodbye then, huh?" she began while tracing a nervous pattern on the ground with her right foot.

Even across that morbid barrier that separated them, Auron seemed to know just how she was feeling. "Yes. For now, anyway. Until the day you are able to join me, since it is impossible for me to return to you."

At this, Rikku lost all sense of reason and threw herself at him for one last bear hug. As she closed her eyes, she could smell the musty sweetness and feel the warmth of his soft red coat as he returned her embrace. Then she realized that the only one she was hugging was herself, appareled in the robe that still carried the scent of its former owner. She felt herself wobble and opened her eyes in time to stop from plummeting off the cliff. When she looked up, he was gone. All that remained of her mentor was a cloud of pyreflies, slowly dispersing and heading out across the flowery meadow of the afterlife.

"Goodbye," she whispered and lovingly placed his stone jar directly across from where he had appeared to her for the last time. She used the sphere grid to put away her new outfit and return to the white mage robe in which she had arrived. Reaching into its pocket, she produced a shiny black fountain pen and knelt to scrawl a message on the jug. After she finished, she stood and backed away respectfully, before running off towards the Celsius.

A few days later, a young man in a blue sweater approached the Farplane to visit his dead sister. As he stepped onto the platform, he was surprised to see an unfamiliar object at the far end. Curious, he approached what seemed to be a stone vessel of some sort. The front still bore the telling inscription of "NOG," but on the back it now said in crude Al Bhed scrawl:

Sir Auron, Beloved Guardian, Mentor, and Friend

May you ever rest in peace.

THE END


End file.
